GOP LAWMAKERS OFFER ALTERNATIVE TO AUTOMATIC CUTS

Group’s plan would pare federal workers to replace funding

WASHINGTON 
A group of GOP lawmakers from the House and Senate on Wednesday offered a plan to cut the federal workforce and use the savings to replace some $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts to the Pentagon and domestic programs.

The legislation reprises a plan offered last year that failed to advance.

The plan would generate replacement savings by requiring a 10 percent reduction in the government’s workforce through attrition — replacing one out of every three employees who leave the government.

The automatic cuts result from the failure of the 2011 deficit “supercommittee” to meet its assignment to cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion over a decade. This year’s $109 billion round of cuts was trimmed by $24 billion in last month’s deal to avert the “fiscal cliff,” but the Pentagon faces an 8 percent, $42.7 billion budget cut in the seven months starting in March and ending in September.

The military’s top brass warns the cuts would create a “hollow force” and would devastate military readiness and training. While war costs and salaries for men and women in uniform would be exempt, those exceptions also serve to make the cuts to other Pentagon accounts, such as weapons procurement and civilian pay, more harsh. “Our enemies would love for this to happen,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.

President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats say new tax revenues need to be part of any measure to replace the automatic cuts, which economists warn would slow the economy if allowed to strike on March 1. Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to act to replace the cuts with tax revenue from closing special interest loopholes and with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Senate Democrats are working on a strategy for replacing the sequester, but they have yet to unify behind a plan.